Saturday, 12 February 2011

Older memories linger longer for good reason.The past reveals itself a stunning temptressin technicolor, while the dull present, no longer in playand practically begging to be sacrificedto the hungry gods of short term memory loss, remainsall monotones, flat blacks and whites, with the whitesgradually fading, as one movesafewstepsback from the picture one begins to make out shades of grey.

Still the river runs in but onedirection, even if colorized. And too there's an odd, faint metallic taste in the water, reminding ofthe artificiality of recollection.

Reading A Few Steps Back and viewing the two Kirchners helped focus and clarify my feelings about some things that have been gnawing at me today. The poem builds naturally and logically and ends really beautifully. It's great to see Kirchner here again; obviously his inclusion is keyed by the writing, but still it seems appropriately seasonal, like the return of a treasured remembered item to a restaurant menu. I love the bottom picture with more figuration, but the upper picture, Snowy Landscape, is unbelievable. As the heavy-duty cold medication begins to hit me, I think Snowy Landscape and A Few Steps Back will remain in the front of my brain.

I wonder if the economicelite who meet at Davoshave ever seen his paintingsand if they havethat he committed suicidesoon after the Nazis destroyedsome of his work and declaredhim, "a degenerate artist"

but then the Nazis never understoodthe creative German spiritbest described as the Beethoven Factor

Recently we flew over a cold, snow-covered landscape, and I kept wondering how one would paint that scene. I no longer have to wonder -- Kirshner did it. His paintings and your words hit the mark. I also love the abandoned home and grain elevators paired with Goldsmith's words -- "children leave the land." In Effigy, the prairie photos are lovely and the poem, well -- the "eye" becomes as important as the "I." Carl Mydan's work shows such bleakness...how little do we learn from the past...

Very interesting thought, Elmo. One dimension, that of Kirchner's weirdly penetrating vision, laid over another, entirely different dimension, that of the global elite summit, like a kind of ghostly transparency.

While the city always feels like a densely overcrowded space, at the same time, oddly, the spaces that have occupied the mind of late, it seems, have been -- as your comment causes me instantly to recognize -- empty, empty...